Browser: Sutherland Lyall surfs the cyberwaves.

The odours of sanctity

These are not the times for extremism. Especially not shining, self-certain, squeaky clean, proselytizing, quasi-religious extremism. Especially not in architecture. So it was a bit of a shock to come across an image of 10 nice, clean-scrubbed young people who have done a summer course at the new school of architecture at the Catholic University of Portugal. The image is on the new Katarxis site at http://luciensteil.tripod.com/katarxis/id5.html. Katarxis is a new Portugese webzine (as they call it) 'dedicated exclusively to ... the type of architecture and city-building which most people all around the world bear in their hearts, love and desire: Traditional architecture, both in its Classical and Vernacular expressions!' Crucial! People on a crusa ... uh, oh, ... Maybe it's because I'm surfing from a godless country in moderate fear of bigots who might kill me because they don't like what might or might not be in my heart. But why otherwise do I get a tad worried when one of the site's three-man editorial b oard is curator of the convent of the Order of Christ at Tomar -- and that the lucky ten had their scheme for an architecture school approved by, among others, the local clerical authorities?

I've subsequently discovered that the Order of Christ at Tomar is a remnant of the Knights Templars. This latter order was, scarily, formed in the eighth century to combat Saracen incursions into the Iberian peninsula and whose members were all arrested in 1307 and obliged to hand over their wealth to the newly-formed Order of Christ. I'm going into hiding.

Kids' stuff

In the UK it's very difficult to establish a toehold for all those worthy schemes to bring architecture to the teenies in our schools. The English national curriculum leaves little time over from the three Rs. It's obviously not quite like that in Philadelphia, as the Foundation for Architecture's Architecture in Education site at www.foundationforarchitecture.org/newstuff/howto.html suggests. Here is an eight week classroom project, lists of resources, some basic illustrations and other help for a programme which, says this AIA-backed foundation, has reached thousands of local students. The foundation is, happily, also into frivolous things, notably an annual Beaux Arts ball held in a significant local building under construction.

Barren browse

It shows your age when you looked for 'beton brut', 'brise-soleil' 'Futurism' and 'piloti' at the site with the name that promised much, Michael Durkin's Architectural Terms at www.masshomes.com/michaeldurkin/glossary.html. Not, however, a dicky-bird about these four. On the other hand 'hipped roof' and 'log-construction' were in the list, the former mesmerizingly described as 'a roof with sloped instead of vertical ends'. The latter apparently involving logs laid on top of each other.

Palpable hits

The Great Buildings Collection, has a welcome plainness of layout and simplicity of access at www.greatbuildings.com/types.html. Type in Stirling and up come Leicester, Cambridge History Faculty and the Neue Staatsgalerie. Usefully you can search by building type, style, date, major city, construction type, climate, context, elements, issues and the editor's choice -- oh and there are two greatest hits lists based on surfers' preferences for buildings and architects on both of which topics you can also base your search.

News by email

And finally a site we visited last year, Design Architecture, at www.designarchitecture.com. Actually, a number of us here take the easy route and subscribe to its regular newsletter. The downside is that stories linger for weeks on the site and in the newsletter -- but then it doesn't pretend that vast amounts of architectural news happen every day. Subscribe to the html version: it's easier to read and has some additional clues to the stories in the form of thumbnails.

Sutherland Lyall is at [e-mail]